Independent Lens (TV Series) Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) User Reviews

In the dictionary next to "hubris"....

[bitcetc · 9/10 · 25 April 2005]

One powerful theme in "The Smartest Guys in the Room" is expressly articulated and repeated for emphasis: this is the story of people, not arcane financial accounting methods or numbers, and because it is people, it can happen again. Enron is just the manifestation of the evil begotten by hubris, in spectacularly public fashion. It is classic Greek tragedy, and it is one from which its chief protagonists, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, must not escape.

Yes, it is a movie with a point of view, but this is not a Michael Moore documentary. Director Alex Gibney brilliantly tells the story simply by interviewing people who were participants in the events, showing the time lines of those events, and interweaving an astonishing amount of video and audio footage taped at Enron, by Enron itself. The movie resolved for me the question: "What did they know, and when did they know it?" They knew. They not only knew; they designed the company to be the ultimate shell game, with no pea. The only thing Enron ever had to sell was its stock price. And they did know that was their only product.

As a Houstonian, I admit that I, a supposedly sophisticated business professional, was intimidated by Enron's assertion in its glory days that the reason I didn't understand its business was just that I wasn't smart enough. My friends, managers and lawyers, some from Harvard thenselves, also admit to the same intimidation. It was not that the questions were not being asked; it was just that we were silenced when Enron avowed that they were the smartest guys in the room. They asserted it, and we believed them. Thank good Fortune that one reporter, Bethany McLean, in almost too soft a voice to be credible as a giant killer, kept asking.

I wish this movie might inspire a larger remedy than the one being attempted by the Department of Justice. Why doesn't Harvard deny admission to people like Jeff Skilling, who, when questioned in his entrance interview whether he was smart, replied, "I'm (expletive deleted) smart"? Why isn't some humility and modesty still ranked a virtue? Why do we celebrate the rise of the specialist educated only in his field, and wholly ignorant of the inevitability of the fall of the Greek protagonist who becomes blinded by arrogance, power, greed---- in short, hubris? Why is ethics a specialty study, instead of integral to every field of study? I sat open-mouthed as the tape showed Jeff Skilling seriously selling a new business idea: selling futures in the weather. He parodied himself on tape: he had a new, better idea than the "mark to market" booking which allowed Enron to book future theoretical profits once they had signed a deal; now he would institute "hypothetical to book", booking profits as soon as he had an idea. What, ultimately, was the difference between the parody and the reality? The horror of listening to traders, who sat in a room directly below Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, with staircases between their executive offices and the trading floor, laughing at the misery they were inflicting on California as they extorted profits from that misery, leaves me outraged long after the movie is over. They threatened and may have cost lives with their fraudulent tactics. They admit it on tape, laughing. They knew. It was their business plan. To make Andrew Fastow the scapegoat for what Enron was developing as its business plan before he was ever hired is simply the continuation of the shell game with no pea. Look for the "designated fall guy". They still think they are the smartest guys in the room.

No, I'll never be selected for the jury pool now, but I wouldn't have been anyway. I'll buy the DVD and watch it a few times during the trials and seethe, lest I forget. Excellent movie, the best kind of documentary.

An Entertaining Introduction to A Business Scandal that Affects Everyone

[noralee · 8/10 · 2 June 2005]

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is an excellent introduction for the general public to the scandal for someone who didn't hear first-hand the warnings about the New Economy that sneered at the responsibilities of a public company or read the articles in Fortune, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, or Business Week while it was all building up, then come tumbling down.

While the film leaves out some of the technicalities, it does an entertaining job of combining talking heads, lively graphics, news clips, incendiary dramatizations (such as of busy, noisy shredders), company documents and whistleblower-obtained stunningly damning audiotapes, web broadcasts and video tapes to document how a major company could grow out of smoke and mirrors to become the largest bankruptcy of its time, bringing down countless victims with it.

Establishing an arresting time line that serves like a ticking clock, the film is excellent at visually demonstrating how other corporations, particularly lenders and brokerages, profited from not revealing the truth.

The filmmakers particularly gleefully accent the company's political connections, going beyond the popular "Kenny Boy" friendship of CEO Ken Lay with George W. to extend to the Bush clan and inner circle, including the Federal Reserve's Greenspan, to hone in on how it fomented self-serving deregulatory policies, with a special emphasis on California and its frighteningly manipulated energy, and resulting political, crisis.

The filmmakers do make some of the talking heads seem objective when they actually have their own profitable axes to grind, such as shareholder attorney William Lerarch, and let the Johnny-come-lately legislators look a little too good as they puff up at the Congressional hearings.

A bit too much is made of the executives as former nerds, as these guys weren't computer geeks; rather there were class issues at work that are hinted at in the brief biographies in the culture of traders who were entrepreneurally lifting their incomes by gambling. At the same time, whistleblower Sherron Watkins's actions and motivations are not emphasized as particularly heroic in going against the company's macho culture (the many Deep Throats cited in the credits as anonymous sources are amusing).

A delightful range of popular music is also used to emphasize points, from Tom Waits to "God Bless the Child," as well as popular culture references from "The Simpsons" to "Gordon Gekko"'s defining quote also keep the film from just being like a dry episode of PBS's "Frontline". I presume the title itself is meant to recall the classic laying bare of the men who got the U.S. mired in the Viet Nam War, Halberstam's "The Best and The Brightest." The film does slight the clear-eyed folks who were warning about the declining ethics in the accounting profession and the lack of fundamentals in the bubble investments as Enron and its ilk were on the way up -- and who were vilified in the business community for their Cassandra pronouncements.

The film does make the Enron situation seem too unique. While personalizing the stories around the head people at the company --especially as they transformed from geeks to power brokers --makes the story easier to follow in a movie, it makes this corporate culture unusual. It also lets off the management consultants, let alone the business schools' emphasis on stock price analysis, who were cheerleaders for these techniques; McKinsey and Harvard spawned at least one of the colorful figures profiled here.

This kind of egotistical "I'm top of the world, Ma" attitude in business was also typical of the Rigas at Adelphia in Pennsylvania, Ebbers at WorldCom in Mississippi, and Scrushy at HealthSouth in Birmingham, Alabama, and the just dethroned Greenberg at AIG scandal in the heart of Wall Street, shows that enough chutzpah and money can deflect anyone, anywhere, using the same techniques -- a ruthless, macho corporate culture that forces out anyone who disagrees, browbeating regulators, hiding secret accounts and spreading around manipulative corporate philanthropy.

At a NY Financial Writers' Association panel as the Enron story was breaking, they did an introspection that unfortunately is not provided by the film, on why they didn't report earlier that the emperor had no clothes (as one of the sub-chapters in the film puts it). The consensus was that the journalists realized they mistrusted the motives of the warners more than they doubted the motives of the corporate executives who were issuing the bravado reports and deflecting timid questions, even though the journalists too late realized that the executives had way more to gain than the Chicken Littles and they were intimidated by their own lack of accounting expertise to recognize the sliding slope of accounting ethics (though the film does very briefly touch on how the CPAs early on accommodated the bubble by too easily officially approving the now notorious "mark to marketing" accounting procedure that permitted the booking of goods not yet obtained, though there's no mention of casually lax acceptance of external auditing firms to simultaneously do internal auditing and profitable consulting).

McLean, a co-writer of the film whose book is the premise for most of the film, did supplement the film in an interview on Charlie Rose that should be included on the DVD by naming the "shorter" (an investor who gains if prices go down) who first had tipped her off, though she didn't there mention the local Houston business reporter she cited at the panel who was the very first one to report suspicion of Enron's numbers. She also clarified on the show that while her article in Business Week is now seen as the beginning of Enron's end, her actual findings were very mildly stated, particularly compared to the full truth as it came out, and only aroused suspicions by the ferocity of the company's denials.

Even as the film concludes with an it could happen again warning, with no analysis if Sarbanes-Oxley will help, it places too much emphasis on the uniqueness of Enron.

The saddest thing I've seen in a long time...

[scouts · 9/10 · 28 March 2005]

Though this movie certainly has some amusing points, it's far from a wacky thrill ride where we are finally able to laugh at the hijinks of a group of people who defrauded tens of thousands of people out of their jobs and their livelihoods. On the contrary, watching people like Lay, Skilling and Fastow defend themselves, their motives and the end result of their mutual greed is at times a sickening display of what people can do when allowed.

Gibney's film is as light-hearted as it can possibly be while still maintaining the integrity needed to realize that the story is no laughing matter. Quite simply, it is a tale of what happens when the bullies take over the playground with their eyes on taking over the school. On a larger note, it points the finger not only at the headline-making executives whom we have all come to know, but at every single other person who willingly allowed it to happen. From the employees and the traders who sacrificed others in order to save themselves, to the banks and the politicians who turned a blind eye in the name of profit, the movie forces us to ask ourselves where culpability and accountability meet.

Is everyone to blame if no one intervened? Interestingly, in a movie filled to the brim with gluttony and arrogance, there's a shimmering hope in the faces of the few people who helped in bringing the scandal to light: Bethany McLean, co-author of the book upon which the movie was based gives a precise and fantastic interview; Sherron Watkins, Enron Vice President (and whistle-blower) repeatedly tries to steer the company in the right direction to no avail; and the one trader who stood up to the company when it's numbers clearly didn't jive, losing his job in the process. Seeing a small handful of people make such a large difference is the tiny bit of inspiration gained from this film, though it really only begs the question of why so few people stood up in a building jam-packed with people who had everything to lose.

An American Tragedy

[writeon_susan · 10/10 · 9 August 2005]

This film is a profoundly entertaining chronicle of American corporate power run amok. Profound because as it dramatizes the rise and fall of Enron, the film casts a longer shadow over the still largely unchanged corporate environment that spawned this smoke and mirrors company. Entertaining due to clever use of storytelling devices, imagery and soundtrack, despite what looks to be a low budget.

The film's strength is in its portrait of the massive "group think" inside and outside of the corporation that supported Enron's rise. It is astounding and chilling to look back on the cheer leading role played by banks, financial media, accounting firms and government. And though Enron, the film, may be weak on explaining how the company built itself up from a simple gas pipeline business to a post-modern corporate megalith, it was probably a wise choice to leave detailed descriptions of the financial manipulations to the book of the same name. The film, does though, miss an opportunity early on to provide a basic explanation of the central paradox of Enron -- earning heaps of money by exploiting commodities trading and accounting methods, while losing heaps of money in real world ventures. Enron set up its first commodities trading desk to capitalize on inside knowledge of the gas business, and then tried to replicate this model with water, broadband, electricity, etc. In actually a trading firm, Enron evaded investment firm regulations by portraying itself as an industrial firm.

Yet, despite some shortcomings, the storytelling is powerful, especially the eye-opening dramatization of Enron's role and the political manipulations behind the California energy-crisis. After viewing the suffering of average Californians, juxtaposed against the callousness of Enron's West Coast energy traders, it felt good to see Kenneth Lay walking in handcuffs.

More than once, the phrase, "this can happen again," echos in the film. It has happened before -- leveraged buyouts, the Savings and Loan crisis, the burst Internet IPO bubble, the 1920s Stock Market crash. A new financial vehicle generates untold riches for some, goes bust, and millions, sometimes billions ... disappear. Enron, the film, is the textbook on how one corporation recently stole from investors, employees and its "customers."

Ask why do we keep on letting this happen.

Harvard Professor to student "How smart are you?" "I'm *@#% smart", Jeff Skilling

[jotix100 · 10/10 · 27 May 2005]

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" directed by Alex Gibney takes a moment to explain in vivid detail about the rise and the fall of that giant of giants, Enron. Based on the book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkin, this documentary holds the viewer glued to the seat because one cannot believe, for a moment, what one is watching on the screen.

The great debacle of the beginning of the century was the Enron downfall. At the same time, it is a cautionary tale for a lot of people about the way some unscrupulous manipulators can wreck havoc in the lives of the people that give their lives working for a any corporation. The Enron workers paid the ultimate price because a few people at the top had an unstoppable greed.

Mr. Gibney is smart in presenting the facts without taking sides. The director is not making a moral judgment at all, he is just letting us absorb how Enron operated and how it was able to pull the wool over everyone's eyes in believing this was the greatest company in the world.

Not only did Enron go down, but it took the Arthur Anderson accounting firm as well. There are thousands of people that are victims of this reckless disregard for the people under these scheming executives, who thought of nothing, but themselves. It's ironic that Jeff Skilling is paying more than twenty million dollars for his own defense, and who knows how much more will Kenneth Lay and Andy Fastow pay to star lawyers in their legal processes.

Ultimately, the real winner seems to be the oriental executive, whose name I don't recall, with an appetite for strippers who ended up being the biggest landowner in Colorado and now is living happily ever after in Hawaii. Compare that picture with the people the Enron workers who lost it all and must now make ends meet with little.

The Enron tragedy should be taught at Harvard as Greed 101, or how to get away with murder in America.

Wow - gotta see it again to believe it!

[nstorm89 · 10/10 · 27 April 2005]

I caught this documentary by chance on HDNET. I was VERY surprised and riveted for the two hours. Finance is my life. I am astounded at the massive amount of apparent complicity on parade with this story. The tremendous greed and bold face lies demonstrated as the story took its turns are the makings of the best thriller novels (sadly, this brings new meaning to "Reality TV"). I've been thinking about this since Friday: these are some of our best and brightest - what ever happened to their ethics, their honesty? It appears that too many were compromised get get their piece of the action. Big Action!~ I have the feeling this is only the tip of the iceberg at Enron - however, the movie is a tremendous collection of some VERY interesting events. Hats off to Bethany, Peter and Alex for a great movie.

This movie is a must-see

[gracie28 · 10/10 · 27 April 2005]

The documentary "The Smartest Guys in the Room" is based on the excellent book by Bethany McClean and Peter Elkind. If you work for an American corporation, have ever owned stock in a corporation, or have mutual funds, you must see this movie. It gives a clear eyed view of what can happen in our society when greed really is considered good. The movie accomplishes what few in this genre have done: It is informative and also entertaining. Some of this is due to the behavior of Enron executives. For example, one frequented strip clubs every night and made his staff come along. Naturally that requires video of strippers. Some of the most damning video is from Enron execs themselves. They never dreamt they would be caught. Hubris gone wild. Go see this movie. Take friends with you. You will be glad you did. First rate film all around.

Boys gone amok

[shifraleah · 16 April 2005]

I just saw this movie at Talk Cinema in Philadelphia. It was an excellent depiction of hubris and greed. The clips of Ken Lay et all were self serving and only seemed to intensify their greed. I would have liked more exploration in to the ties with the Bush Dynasty but that said it was an interesting intense film. Definitely one that I would be happy to recommend. There is one critique I would make is that although the film touched on the many lives that were ruined by the Enron Scandle,it did not give them a real human face.

In the eighties we called people like the Enron Executives "Masters of the Universe." Now we can call at as we see it, Over grown former nerds with no morality and no conscience.

.

Decent doc

[curtiswaldo · 7/10 · 12 March 2005]

I just saw this movie at the Austin South by Southwest Film Festival, and having read the book of the same name on which this movie is based, the filmmakers did a good job of fitting a lot of information into two hours. I thought the most entertaining part of the film was the portraits of the primary Enron villains (Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, and Andy Fastow). The book illustrated how these people often were made to eat their words, and seeing it on video makes it funny as well as sad.

Having said that, I thought the filmmakers focused too much (about a fourth of the film) on the California energy crisis. Whether this was because the director was from California I don't know, but Enron was far from the only or even the biggest beneficiary of Calafornia's energy difficulties. Enron took advantage of the energy market in CA because that is what the rules let it do (the rules were put in place by the CA legislature and approved by Gray Davis, whom the film inexplicably portrays as some sort of martyr). Also the film's portrayal of Enron's close ties to the Bush family feel more like Michael Moore-style political hackery than genuine investigation (let's find some videotape of Bush saying he liked Enron then show it for five minutes!) Ultimately the movie seems to blame the free market system itself for Enron's collapse instead of the hubris-run-amok that was portrayed so well in the book from which the film was adapted. That being said, watching a bunch of thieving, scheming CEO's who once ruled the world stumble over their own lies can be quite amusing, if not vindicating.

Energetic Hubris.

[JohnDeSando · 8/10 · 11 May 2005]

"Ask why" was the mantra of one of the most remarkable companies in the history of modern society: Enron. And not one, not even the venerable accounting firm of Arthur Anderson, asked that question. So the little energy company that could amassed billions of dollars through deceptive accounting practices, mainly by stating profit based on future earnings (HFV=hypothetical future value) and shipping losses to offshore shell companies.

Alex Gibney's absorbing documentary, based on the book co-authored by the first prominent whistle blower and Enron executive, Bethany McLean, begins with the tragic concept of the pervasive fatal flaw, hubris, and applies it meticulously to the tragic figures Ken Lay, Andrew Skilling, and Andrew Fastow. Tragic in the sense that those talented executives allowed the company to fall while they lined their pockets with the assets of its 20, 000 employees, countless investors, and the state of California, which suffered mammoth losses due to its new energy deregulation and manipulation of that energy by Enron.

The documentary succeeds in explaining the crimes while lacing the story with just enough drama to make suspenseful the outcome we all know before we view the film: Fastow is doing time, Lay and Skilling await trial, former employees work past their retirement ages because their pensions have been gobbled up by the crimes, and California now regulates its energy but still suffers from massive deficit.

The documentary fails when it manipulates its audience with background songs that dramatize the obvious ironies, e.g.' "Son of a Preacher Man" plays during Lay's biography. Such skewering is almost impossible to avoid once a documentarian picks up a camera and selects the images; what he doesn't have to do is underscore the irony—The players will do it all on their own. It also seems to hold back on the cozy relationship between Lay and the Bush family. Perhaps another time.

Meanwhile, this documentary is compelling viewing of a tragedy about a company, as one of the talking heads describes, that was "a house of cards . . . built over a pool of gasoline." It is enjoyable to see it figuratively torched like the House of Wax.

Your Blood Will Boil

[HankToms · 7/10 · 18 May 2005]

Toward the end of Enron's reign, many analysts were questioning what the company actually produced. Despite downward stock trends, Enron always managed to thrive. But how? Top Enron executives would bully and intimidate anyone who dug deeper than the quarterly report. How dare we question them, especially when they were making so much damn money in the process.

You have to see for yourself how deep the corruption goes. They were playing with Monopoly money and, from what we were told, they owned every hotel on Boardwalk. You have to see how they manipulated California's energy crisis a couple of years back to recoup internal losses. Such contempt is incomprehensible. Like I said, your blood will boil.

Many other reviewers have compared this movie to Farenheit 911 or blamed the events on the Bush administration. Neither is accurate. While this movie does illustrate a few flimsy connections between Ken Lay and the Bush family, those connections do not hold weight. As well, this movie is not Farenheit 911. While that movie spewed anything negative despite easy refute, this movie moves chronologically from a glorious beginning to a despicable end. Wherever one stands on the political spectrum, we all have to agree what this company did was wrong.

If you show some patience during this movie, it will get to you. Mark my words.

Excellent, lucid documentary on a complex subject

[WriConsult · 8/10 · 6 July 2005]

As is often the case, many of the greatest stories are truth, rather than fiction. If you made this up, no one would believe you -- yet it happened just the same. The history of Enron is traced from its beginnings though its eventual collapse, with lots of great footage of the main players in action.

I think this film's most telling observations were (1) that every quarter it appeared to the line-level employees as if they wouldn't make their numbers, yet at the end of the quarter somehow they always did, and (2) once they started fudging the numbers, Enron's financial wizards found they had to keep lying, and the lies had to keep getting bigger: if they stopped lying their change in outlook would be noticed, and all the previous lies would be exposed. This was also true of the banks and auditors involved, who once they approved the first lie had to keep going along with it or their complicity would be exposed.

As an economist and a Pacific Northwesterner, I was glued to the Western energy crisis as it unfolded. I'm going to discuss the content and context of the movie in some detail here.

Enron already had the ability to dramatically limit the supply of power, both at the generating and at the transmission level, but the winter of 2000-01 presented the perfect alignment of circumstances. First, Washington and Oregon had our worst drought in years, which cut way back on our power supply, which is mostly hydroelectric. Historically hydro power has been abundant, so electric heating is common here, and even in a normal winter we buy California's surplus to heat our homes, returning our surplus to them in the summer when they need it for A/C. Usually that's a good deal all around -- but thanks to Enron, California didn't have a surplus, exactly when we needed it most.

The second thing that happened was that an Enron-friendly administration was elected to power. Ken Lay was a good personal friend of GWB (and not just George Sr., as an earlier reviewer stated), frequently attended family picnics and was affectionately referred to as "Kenny Boy" by GWB. His company was the largest single contributor to Bush's election. At the height of the crisis, Dick Cheney (who had just met with Lay the previous day) testified against the imposition of price controls. This directly resulted in billions of additional profits to Enron and billions of additional costs to Westerners. It was only through later imposition of those very price controls that the crisis ever came to an end, because they removed Enron's incentive to limit supply.

Kudos to the movie for not sugar-coating these facts, because it's important to understand that IS how politics works. This kind of complicity happens on both sides of the aisle, but there's no escaping the fact that in this particular scandal it was Republican politicians who were complicit. This may make the movie appear biased to some, but the facts in this case are irrefutable. Here's another tidbit not covered in the movie: As chair of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Wendy Gramm (wife of Texas Senator Phill Gramm, a major Enron recipient) ruled in 1992 to exempt Enron's energy-trading scheme from federal regulation -- and shortly afterward was appointed to Enron's board of directors.

In fairness to the other side, Gray Davis completely bungled Calfornia's response to the crisis, creating unnecessary additional debt for the state -- but still, his worst crime was incompetence, not complicity, since it was on Republican Pete Wilson's watch that California's so-called "deregulation" was signed into law. Two friends of mine who are energy economists (one of whom worked for PG&E, the other of whom is a Libertarian) looked closely at California's plan at the time and warned of the disaster to come. It was predictable. It was Wilson who should have borne the consequences.

The third thing that happened -- and was not mentioned in much detail in the film -- was that 2001 was a year when a particularly large number of long-term energy contracts were to be renegotiated. These contracts are typically for 7 year terms, so the wholesale price in effect at the time of contract renewal is the price that stays in effect for 7 years. So despite the fact that wholesale prices have returned to some semblance of normalcy, Enron managed to lock in a lot of its buyers at inflated prices for the next 7 years. Which means this is not just a historical crisis. Westerners (not just Californians) will be paying billions of dollars for inflated electricity for several more years to come.

All in all, I can forgive this movie its omissions (not emphasizing that it wasn't just California who got screwed, leaving out Wendy Gramm, etc.). Those are side notes that should be of interest to anyone with a deep interest in these events, but this movie is already crammed full of facts and there's no need to lengthen it. It's hard to miss the point, and hard to miss the irony that the company whose tagline was "Ask Why?" was brought down by someone who asked that very question. 8/10.

Yes, Virginia, this documentary is biased

[kammm · 7/10 · 5 May 2005]

While this is a well done and interesting examination of the Enron debacle, it alludes to some of the company's downfall in sweeping statements that better documentaries actually explore. Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room doesn't take it's point of view from the book: that it was hubris and arrogance that were at fault here, rather the director places the blame squarely on the feet of capitalism and deregulation. The answer isn't more regulation. Where was the SEC while all this deception was occurring??

The theater I went to (in Los Angeles) had some guy with a clip board gathering signatures to pull what little deregulation is left here. The California "deregulation" wasn't deregulation at all, in fact, it was the worst of both worlds. The rules (signed off by both a democrat and a republican: Davis and Wilson) forced the highest bidder of the day to set the price for all energy sales, and yet still provided no accountability for the power plants. That's why when Enron called and said shut down, they said "oh okay." FYI: that doesn't happen in a real marketplace. If a trader called Sony and told them not to release any movies next month, they'd tell them to stuff it. Like most "solutions," the partial deregulation in California was begging for someone to come in and manipulate pricing and supply--but it took a company comprised of individuals who seemed to have absolutely NO moral fiber to not only do it but to squeeze it dry. Gray Davis is portrayed as a victim, he wanted the Feds to sweep in and save him when someone like Arnold would have had a bevy of analysts look at what was happening, and then taken the first plane to Houston.

The other part of the movie that other commentaries here have completely missed is that it *does* suggest the Bush's turned a blind eye to both Enron and California's difficulties for political reasons. Now, by my math, at least eight of those fifteen years of raping and pillaging a Dem was in the White House. But no mention of the fact Enron contributed to Clinton's campaign, and/or there was probably a relationship with that administration also. Does this director really think things would have been different had Gore won in 2000?

The movie is good, definitely worth seeing, but needed more of what "regulators" around Enron failed to do: look at the details. I think by doing that, it would have been more balanced, ultimately truthful and pushed itself into the category of "great."

Do the traders get jail time too?

[fagtc23 · 4/10 · 28 October 2006]

As a CA resident, I'd like to see the jackholes who were shutting down the electricity plants to raise the prices get some jail time too.

I thought the movie was pretty good and has some very informative pieces. While they stuck to how Enron rose and crashed, I found it really interesting. However, when the movie focused on it's anti-Bush slant, it made me wonder if they were really being accurate.

It's fine to point out any connection the Republicans had to Enron, but the monster was created while Clinton was president. The CA energy crisis happened under Davis's watch. Both were in office during Enron's abuses, but neither are held accountable in any way. Rather, many minutes are spent on how Bush was friends with Lay. So what? Lay played golf with Clinton and spent the night in the Lincoln bedroom. Why are Democrats given such a free pass in this film? I think most politicians are a waste of our taxpayer money so I'm not partial to either party but I hate feeling like I'm subject to someone's political agenda when I watch a documentary. Yes, politicians deserve some blame, but I really doubt that the only guilty one's have Rs after their names. I found no value in portraying the Bush's as Kay-lovers when Democrats received just as much Enron campaign money as Republicans did. Like I said, it weakens the rest of the film for me because it makes me suspicious of the rest of the facts they lay out.

Very very interesting... must see.

[tpaladino · 8/10 · 20 September 2006]

I went into viewing this film with the expectation that it would be a Michael Moore-like anti-corporate propaganda piece, portraying executives as 2-dimensional robber-baron caricatures, and the entire capitalist system as a failed experiment.

Thankfully, I was quite wrong. I found the film to be both factual and evenhanded, and it's portrayal of the key Enron players provided depth, character, and even compassion at times.

There's no doubt that Enron was the defining business fiasco of the last 20 years, but what struck me about this films presentation (and which was wholly lost in most of the media coverage) is that its downfall was not entirely driven by greed. At least, not at the highest levels of the firm.

The primary contributing factor to the disaster was, in fact, ego. These guys didn't wake up in the morning looking to rip off their employees and shareholders and tank the company. They had (what they thought was) a revolutionary idea on how to sell energy in the marketplace. As far as they could tell, it was dynamite on paper, and they had their egos so wrapped up in these ideas, that they became completely blind to the reality that they were hemorrhaging capital because it simply didn't work in reality. It got to the point that in order to conceal their intellectual failure, they embarked on ever-more radical measures to hide the firms losses. Mind you, they all seemed to genuinely believe that eventually these new ideas would begin to work, and they would recoup all the losses and then some. At times, it seemed to resemble the attitude of a gambler who can't get up from the card game because he's waiting for that one perfect hand that never comes, and loses the house and car in the process. It's not what he intended when he sat down, but its the result nonetheless.

Of course, Enron was cheered on by the irrational exuberance of the late-90's boom market, which only served to enable this attitude, and in fact attracted a lot of genuinely greedy and sleazy traders, brokers and banker who were eager to make a buck off of the Enron business model.

Which leads me to the one disappointment that I have with this film, which is that it omits entirely the role that the Clinton Administration played in fostering the irrationally exuberant Wall Street culture of the era. If Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were the degenerate gamblers, Bill Clinton was the enabling wife who never put her foot down and demanded he get help or get out. (The film, does, however detail the business dealings that Enron had with the Bush family... they should have either left politics out, or been more evenhanded in this regard.) What is remarkable, however, is the relatively short amount of time this all occurred in. Enron went from modest pipeline company, to energy juggernaut to total bust in, what, 5-6 years? Amazing.

Some will walk away from the Enron story convinced that the system will never work. I, however, see it differently. To me, the system worked. If it has proved anything, it's that no matter how rich, powerful or influential you are, you simply can't cook the books for very long in a free market environment before everything comes crashing down around you in a big way. The Enron story should make powerful executives think twice when tempted to do something unethical, regardless of intention. Which really should be a comforting thought for everyone.

See this film. It's definitely worth the time.

Why didn't anyone ask why?

[lastliberal · 10/10 · 22 January 2006]

Yes, it is about numbers. I know that is hard for some to take. In fact, I know that some people don't want to hear about intricate financial details. That is very evident by the voting patterns here in America. But, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is more about people. The characters that led Enron to its downfall are really interesting and come across in a way that, if you weren't watching them in a documentary, you would want to watch a movie about them.

The unholy trinity of Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow managed to manipulate the numbers, manipulate the stock analysts, manipulate the press, and manipulate the financial institutions to a point that is just beyond belief. The corporate motto was "Ask why." A whole lot of people outside the corporation failed to ask why, or crumbled like the White House press corps when they were getting smoke blown up their skirts.

Two things really stand out in this film besides the three people mentioned. The employees of Enron themselves for the most part didn't see the crumbling of the company because they just didn't want to add things up.

Also, this movie is rated "R" for some brief nudity and for the language of the traders handling the California energy mess. When you hear those traders who took down the California energy grid, you would agree that this film should have been rated XXX. It was just plain obscene to listen to the greed and callousness of these traders.

The bottom line is that every voter who goes to the polls in 2006 without seeing this film first is just plain irresponsible. But that is just my opinion.

'Twas hubris killed the beast

[anhedonia · 8/10 · 29 January 2006]

The chief characters in the Enron debacle all seemed to be functioning on the same mantra, that Gordon Gekko line from "Wall Street" (1987) that epitomized the 1980s: "Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good." Except what Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow did wasn't in the 1980s, but in this century and they blithely and without any compunction did it for personal gain while tens of thousands were left with nothing.

The Enron scandal was a tough one to understand, at least to me it was, because you could never quite figure out what Enron did. And director Alex Gibney breaks it all down matter-of-factly, never taking sides, never being judgmental, to show us what happened. Of course, he really doesn't need to be judgmental because the actions of Lay, Skilling and Fastow (and a few others) speak volumes.

Gibney's film very well could have been a convoluted mess. But he never loses sight of the fact that this is essentially a story about people. Not only the masters of the universe whose hubris eventually brought them down but, more importantly, the people whose livelihoods depended on what Lay, Fastow and Skilling did and who, unlike those three, didn't have millions to fall back on.

It's impossible not to feel incensed by what they did. Lay, Fastow and Skilling destroyed countless lives, yet they left with millions. There's a moment when Lay bemoans that his net worth dipped from $20 million to, I believe, $6 million. Yeah, tell that to the Oregonian utility worker, whose $340,000 nest egg was eventually only worth $1,200 after Enron stock tumbled in the wake of the scandal.

What's ultimately devastating about this film is listening to the tapes of Enron traders joking about how they were holding California hostage and letting people there suffer without electricity. These chaps are cold, callous and exemplify the Enron environment.

This is a fascinating film because it exposes these guys for who they are. And after listening to those interviewed in this film, it's impossible to believe Lay and Skilling were somehow oblivious to it all. How else could you explain why they insisted Enron employees invest in the company stock while they themselves were cashing out?

What's equally infuriating is realizing how Wall Street sucked up to Enron and how investment firms turned on anyone who dared to question Enron's power.

Of course, it's not surprising at all to see Lay's connections to the Bush family. But I am certain Dubya really didn't know very well someone he called "Kenny Boy." Just as, I'm sure, W's photos with Jack Abramoff mean absolutely nothing, either.

There's a moment in "Wall Street" when Bud Fox asks Gordon, "How much is enough?" And Gordon replies, "It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another."

That's exactly what Enron did under Lay and Skilling. Except they did it on the backs of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans who lost pretty much everything. I can only hope the American justice system does right by all those workers.

how things work

[jamesdamnbrown · 3 June 2005]

If you want to know how this country works, go see this film. Not only did the guys running Enron pull off the single biggest corporate swindle in history, they had most of Wall Street helping them out. Arthur Anderson—the oldest accounting firm in the country, which was destroyed by this scandal—got the ball rolling when it signed off on Enron's mark-to-market accounting scheme, which allowed Enron to declare as income any deal the company made as soon as the ink dried on the agreement, and at whatever value Enron said the deal would be worth in the future, whether or not that amount turned out to have anything to do with reality. Enron began to claim enormous nonexistent profits in a spectacularly successful effort to drive up the price of its own stock, and the company's chief financial officer began setting up external corporations under his own name to do business with Enron and help bury Enron's debt by getting paid in Enron stock. Major banks like Citibank, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan all invested in these bogus companies even though they knew it was fraudulent, simply because there was tons of money to be made and the SEC was looking the other way, thanks in large part to Ken Lay's best buddy in the Oval Office.

This situation was not dissimilar to the savings and loan debacle of the 80s, when the elder Bush was using the Executive Branch to run interference for all of his buddies, who were trading overvalued real estate and other assets back and forth, paying themselves substantial fees for every transaction and borrowing money for the deals from S&Ls, which they knew taxpayers would have to repay once all of the deals went bankrupt. And the recent United Airlines bankruptcy, which wiped out its employee pension funds, is just the tip of the coming iceberg. For years now, major corporations in the airline, steel and auto industries have been using the mark-to-market dodge to underfund their retirement funds. These corporations have been declaring as income nonexistent profits based on ridiculously inflated projected future returns from investing their pension funds in the stock market. And just like Enron and United, when these companies fail their employees will lose their retirement benefits while the CEOs bail out with armloads of money. And taxpayers will have to pay again when the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, created by Congress in 1974, goes bankrupt from trying to cover all of the failing pension plans and the federal government has to bail it out, possibly to the tune of $100 billion or more.

The free market myth dies hard, but going all the way back to the era when the railroads secured fortune-making land grants from easily purchased Congressional legislators, big money has been made in this country through crony capitalism—by restricting competition, securing franchises and monopolies and no-bid contracts from the federal government, bankrolling politicians who look the other way while the piggy bank is being raided. It's an old story, and Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room tells it well.

A dark allegory about corporate America

[Agent10 · 9/10 · 27 June 2005]

For those that wish to make money at any means possible, use Enron:The Smartest Men in the Room as a guide. Corporations in general get a pretty ride in our country, but to fully understand how greedy and senseless one of these mega-corps can get is well defined in this documentary.

While Republicans blast the film for being overly critical at their party, let's face it: Enron was a Republian company founded by Republicans. The simple truth of the film is that the executives within Enron CHOSE to be ingrates, ENRON chose to destroy the lives of their investors and employees, and they also took down Arthur Anderson (who were as much responsible for the debacle) as well.

Sadly, this film presents one of the last vestiges of investigative reporting, something that our entire press (not just the "liberal bias" press and the "right-wing whacko" press") failed to pick up or even think about. We just sat along for the ride, watching the wave of wealth enter and engulf us all. Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling and the rest of their cronies will walk away with maybe a 10-year sentence and future assets that will most likely be fueled by book deals and personal interviews. All the while, regular people will languish in their lost pension and retirement funds. And even with all of this happening, the great chain of corporate greed will get stronger and more adept at avoiding the law.

Unfettered Hubris Drives Intriguing Account of Enron Scandal

[EUyeshima · 7/10 · 14 December 2005]

Even after reading Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story", I was not prepared for the near-Greek tragedy presented in this smartly produced documentary of the Enron scandal based on yet another book by journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. Directed by Andy Gibney, the film follows the complicated rise and fall of Enron in an easy-to-follow, chronological order, from the mid-1980's to the present, using actor Peter Coyote's lucid voice-over narration. Enron started as a moderate-sized Houston gas-pipeline company that grew exponentially, reaping benefits for shareholders and far more so for the Enron executive team for a long, uninterrupted stretch. Billions of dollars were collected due to speculative mark-to-market accounting techniques approved by the SEC, and Enron consequently became one of the world's largest natural-gas suppliers.

What resonates most from this searing film is how circumstantially pathological the chief villains are in this true corporate morality story. While the infamous Ken Lay comes across as the corrupt figurehead we have already come to know through news reports, it's really Enron CFO Andy Fastow (dubbed appropriately "The Sorcerer's Apprentice") and especially President and COO Jeff Skilling, who are mercilessly exposed here. Skilling is portrayed as a brilliant leader and a corporate Darwinist, whose favorite book is Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene", which he apparently translated into a bloodless performance review policy that worked like a genetic algorithm for people. Employees were rated on a 1-5 scale based on the amount of money one made for the company. Skilling mandated that between 10-15% of employees had to be rated as 5's (worst). And to get a rating of 5 meant that one was immediately fired. This review process was dubbed "rank and yank." Such was a typical example of his survivalist thinking. However, the corruption spread throughout the company, as Enron was responsible for, among other things, gaming the Northern California "rolling blackouts" in 2001, whereby the company profited as huge parts of the state were plunged into darkness. Citizens were threatened by a deregulation plan that essentially enabled a number of immoral Enron traders (led by Tim Belden) to place calls that drove up energy-market prices and took advantage of power-plant shutdowns. Of course, the Bush family dynasty does not come across unscathed in the Enron story and justifiably so according to their inextricable ties to Lay.

Gibney effectively uses video footage from testimony at congressional hearings, as well as interviews with disillusioned former employees such as Mike Muckleroy and whistle-blower Sherron Watkins (who uses some effective pop culture references like "Body Heat" and Jonestown to get her points across). There are some amusing vignettes and images that tie some of the disparate elements together with excessive glibness. The documentary is best when it sticks to the facts, for this is one inarguable case where fact is truly stranger than fiction. Highly recommended.

Smart guys do finish last, don't they?

[diane-34 · 10/10 · 22 October 2005]

Enron is a movie you sit through-not one you enjoy or one that makes you happy or one that makes you feel good about the mere knowledge of your fleeting existence on this floating rock. No Enron makes you feel dirty-makes you feel corrupted by the fact that you must share you space on this rock with morons like the assembled fools collected by Lay to fleece individuals, communities and entire areas of the United States.

After watching this motley bunch of capitalists you can easily see that Ronald Reagan's evil empire was simmering in America and ready to mature into the predatory insanity cooked up by the Enron executives.

Alex Gibney presented the facts and, we the audience, can judge those pieces of information as we must. He did not become polemical-he just told the story as it happened. He is to be congratulated for not using the pulpit of cinema to range wider than he did in this brilliant expose' of the depths to which people will fall in order to accumulate power and wealth.

A wonderful film and one which demands attention.

Vaguely interesting but incomplete

[SFfilmgoer · 6/10 · 8 May 2005]

This film was vaguely interesting, but I am still not sure what Enron Corp. was all about. The film gives the impression that Enron made its money by speculating in the commodity market, although they apparently lost in the market more than they won. The company needed money to operate but it is unclear where the money to operate the company came from. There is a minor reference to power plants that they owned (did they actually own them?).

It would have been more complete if they let us know a little more about Enron rather than concentrating only on the wrongdoings of a few individuals.

The role of Wall St. brokers who played a big part in the deception was given minimal exposure in the movie, mostly depicting the brokers as innocent and unknowing although the brokers did not do their "due diligence" in recommending Enron stock to their clients. The film is worth seeing only if you have nothing else to do and nothing better is playing.

a must-see documentary

[Buddy-51 · 9/10 · 24 August 2006]

Don't be surprised if you find yourself throwing things at the screen while watching "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a brilliantly effective and meticulously researched documentary (based on the book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind) that is guaranteed to get both your dander and your adrenaline up to dangerously high levels.

Rarely does a real life event provide us with as clear and universally recognized a symbol of a larger social theme as does the fall of Enron, which, in the years since it happened, has come to stand for everything that's wrong with corporate America. It is the classic tale of corruption and unethical behavior performed in the service of unbridled greed. That the men responsible for the disaster took so many innocent people down with them is what makes it a tragedy. In fact, more than one person interviewed for the film draws the parallel between the downfall of Enron and the sinking of the Titanic - an apt analogy if ever there was one, only, in this case, the captains had no intention of going down with the ship, preferring instead to ruthlessly knock over any number of helpless women and children in the desperate race to the lifeboats.

The beauty of the film is that it takes a very complex and convoluted story and makes it completely comprehensible to those of us who might otherwise get lost in the maze of arcane corporate-world details. The movie introduces us to the key players - primarily CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay, and CFO Andrew Fastow - showing the step-by-step process by which they built the energy corporation virtually from scratch, raised it to the position of seventh largest company in the world, then slowly destroyed it through deceit, hubris and greed - but not, of course, before bestowing obscene multi-million dollar packages on themselves as compensation. We see how they employed little more than smoke-and-mirror accounting schemes to pull the wool over the eyes of investors, regulatory commissions and fellow employees. However, the film makes it clear that a large number of "reputable" banks and loan agencies must also have been complicit in the company's malfeasance for all of this to have come off so effectively.

As always, it is the "little guy" who winds up getting shafted. Probably the greatest hair-pulling section of the film involves Enron's cold-blooded creation and manipulation of California's bogus "energy crisis" in the early 2000's, which drained billions from the state's treasury, a situation which the newly elected President Bush, ever sympathetic to his buddies in the energy business, refused to help rectify. Just as bad is the CEOs' callous encouragement of their own lower level employees to invest their retirement savings in the company's 401K plan that the chief executives themselves knew would soon be defunct. With hissable villains like these around, who needs fiction? The sole consolation is the fact that the system did work in the end, that the wrongdoers eventually overreached to such an extent that the house of cards they had built finally came tumbling down. There's certainly a great deal of joy in seeing the creeps responsible for the catastrophe being carted off to jail in handcuffs and sweating under the public scrutiny of a congressional investigative committee. (It should be noted that the film predates Ken Lay's death in 2006). The movie also balances the case by highlighting some of the "heroes" in the story, primarily whistleblowers within the company and a resourceful reporter for FORTUNE magazine who was the first to hint in a public forum that Enron might just be the corporate equivalent of the emperor with no clothes.

This is more than just a mere "talking heads" documentary. It explores the details of the story within the broader context of unbridled capitalism, de-regulation, and corporate corruption. The movie also shows us how strangely immature the men at the head of this company were, with their frat boy antics and the daredevil activities they indulged in to erase their "nerd" image and to establish their bona fides as real "macho" men. The fact that individuals of this caliber could spell the ruin of so many trusting people is what gives the movie's title that little ironic kick.

By all means, don't miss this film - though you might want to have a good stiff drink handy for when it's over.

Would have been better if they left the politics out of it

[asc85 · 6/10 · 4 February 2006]

This is still a very good movie, but would have been better had they stuck to this as a "business" issue and stayed apolitical. This is relatively recent news, so I remember it at the time it happened of course. I certainly don't remember there being talk about the Bush's being responsible for the Enron debacle...did Michael Moore secretly direct this movie under a different name? And the suggestion that Enron manipulated electricity prices in California for Gray Davis to be recalled and Arnold to become Governor is the latest example of the left's constant whining of a "vast right wing conspiracy."

I really felt after watching this movie that Jeff Skilling must be a sociopath. How someone can blatantly lie like that with such a straight face is amazing.

Finally, I have always been impressed with Bethany McLean, one of the co-authors of the book, and the woman who wrote the article in Fortune (which I remember reading at that time) that was the beginning of the end for Enron. For someone who is so young and bright, it is hard to believe how incredibly humble she is.

Read the far superior Eichenwald book instead

[SMM-3 · 5/10 · 20 June 2005]

After hearing so much about Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, I was eager to see it. What a disappointment. The underlying story is deep and worthwhile, so I was amazed that the film makers opted at every turn for cuteness over insight. Let me offer two specific examples:

1. Among many examples of a diseased corporate culture run amok, perhaps the purest were the special purpose entities created by Andrew Fastow,ostensibly to hedge risks for Enron, but in actuality to take debt off its balance sheet at great expense to shareholders, while enriching Fastow and his partners. These transactions were complex, but comprehensible, yet the film makers spent virtually no time trying to help us understand them except at the most superficial level.

2. Much is made of Enron's behavior during the crisis in the California wholesale electricity market. While this made for some flashy scenes, and allowed the use of shocking audio tapes of Enron traders being ruthless money-makers, it did very little to illuminate the failings that were particular to Enron. The trading behavior we witness was -- as the film points out -- also happening at other firms at the same time. Moreover, the opportunity to take such wanton advantage of the taxpayers and consumers of California was the result of deeply flawed market design. Finally, in order to maintain laser focus on Enron, the film makers allow Gray Davis and others who bear no small accountability for this disaster to make self-serving, and completely unchallenged statements.

If you have any interest in the Enron story -- and if you're in business, you should -- PLEASE read Kurt Eichenwald's excellent book "Conspiracy of Fools." Afterward, this film provides a useful supplement in that it does allow you to see and hear the amazing lies directly from Lay, Skilling, Fastow and others. This film is worth seeing, but compared with the depth of coverage in a typical Frontline, this is a music video.